What started out as a very boring hockey match between the Harvard and Dartmouth freshman teams warmed up considerably in the course of the action. The Yardlings took that match, 5-2.
The Big Green icemen made their first goal early in the first period against an unwary Crimson goalkeeper, Brian Petrovek, but Petrovek woke up--as did his teammates--and kept the Big Green from scoring more than one more point the rest of the game.
Harvard's hottest action came in the third period. After Pierre Paquette and Jonathan Schuster assisted David Bell in scoring a goal in the last 22 seconds of the second period to tie the score, 1-1, the Crimson players came back in the last period to more than make up for their lackadaisical play the previous 39 minutes.
Yardlings Come Alive
Coming into the third period, the Yardlings' play was noticeably more aggressive. Less than ten minutes into that period, Pierre Paquette was assisted by Bill Horton in scoring. Two minutes later, on an assist from Mike Leckie and Bill MacKenzie, Horton slapped one in, and Harvard led by two points. Victory looked inevitable when Bill Hozack, assisted by Kenneth Dummitt and Jeremy Wintersteen, let fly with a slap shot from about twenty feet out. The hard-worked Dartmouth goalie could be heard cursing clear across the rink.
Dartmouth made a minor comeback three minutes after the Crimson goal when the Big Green's Brian McCloskey caught goalie Petrovek in the wrong corner and slapped in a very easy shot. Harvard then scored another goal with 90 seconds left in the match when Dartmouth's goalie, Jeff Sollows, fell on the ice to stop what he thought was an attempted shot. When Sollows hit the ice, Harvard's Mike Leckie, assisted by the ubiquitous Horton and Bell, made a shot that ran up the score to 5-2.
It was an exciting finish to what looked to be an unexciting match. Harvard's performance the last period differed incredibly from its performance in the first, when the fastest action was the Zamboni machine preparing the ice for the second period.
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Harvard Men's Hockey